Flea Issues Statement Regarding Superbowl Controversy

For a lot of people the Super Bowl was full of disappointments. The State of Colorado, and Broncos fans around the world, are still in a state of shock, as are Red Hot Chili Peppers fans. Not only did the band not play a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused," which had been promised, but it was revealed that the band didn't even play live during their half time performance.

Flea, bassist of the band, issued a 930-word open letter to fans regarding the controversy. In the message, titled "A Letter from Flea," the bassist explained that "when we were asked by the NFL and Bruno to play our song 'Give It Away' at the Super Bowl, it was made clear to us that the vocals would be live, but the bass, drums, and guitar would be pre-recorded."

"I understand the NFL's stance on this, given they only have a few minutes to set up the stage, there a zillion things that could go wrong and ruin the sound for the folks watching in the stadium and the t.v. viewers. There was not any room for argument on this, the NFL does not want to risk their show being botched by bad sound, period" he continued.

Flea went on to write about how the band is against "any sort of miming" and that "there was a lot of confusion amongst us as whether or not we should do it, but we eventually decided, it was a surreal-like, once in a life time crazy thing to do and we would just have fun and do it."

He finished off the statement by saying "could we have plugged them in and avoided bumming people out who have expressed disappointment that the instrumental track was pre recorded? Of course easily we could have and this would be a non-issue. We thought it better to not pretend. It seemed like the realest thing to do in the circumstance. It was like making a music video in front of a gazillion people, except with live vocals, and only one chance to rock it. Our only thought was to bring the spirit of who we are to the people."

In the end, Flea says " I would do it all the same way again." What do you think?